Keira Knightley is often approached by strangers in the street, who tell her just how much they hate her work and looks.

The 31-year-old Oscar-nominated actress, who has starred in movies including Pirates of the Caribbean, Pride and Prejudice, Atonement and The Imitation Game, made the startling revelation in a recent interview.

Keira, who is mother to 18-month-old daughter Edie and wife to The Klaxons frontman James Righton, said she very rarely gets complimented in public and can't understand why she attracts so much hatred.

"Yesterday I had two really lovely people come up to me in the street and just say how much they like my work, which almost never happens," she told Harper's Bazaar magazine.

"(The angry ones) are very odd... It feels like you're not meant to be walking down the street doing your shopping. Or they just hate your work, in which case they say, 'I hate your work'. Or they hate your face, in which case they say, 'I hate your face'," she revealed.

"But it's more like a kind of jokey, 'Oh God, I've always hated you' Or, 'I've always found your face so annoying.' I've had that quite a few times. Like, 'Oh sorry! Sorry about that.' Yeah. So there's still a couple of those, but not as much as it was," Keira added.

Despite the mixed opinions she gets from members of the public, the actress isn't letting the criticism affect her career and will soon start work on movies The Aftermath and The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, in which she is set to play the Sugar Plum Fairy. And due to having such busy personal and professional lives, Keria likes to totally switch off after finishing work on a hectic film shoot.

"I'm very ambitious and totally ambivalent at the same time," Keira explained. "I do periods where I work a lot and then... it has to go to absolute nothingness."